In the field of liquid crystal display technologies, a method for suppressing flickers which commonly occur in a Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) is to achieve spatial fusion of respective optical waveforms of adjacent pixels. To this end, the polarities of driving voltages of the adjacent pixels are required to be inverse to each other. There are several driving methods for achieving the inverse polarities of the adjacent pixels, such as a dot inversion, a column inversion, a row inversion and so on. When an image is displayed, a pixel voltage Vp (i.e., a signal voltage Vp on a pixel electrode) applied across liquid crystals may have one of positive and negative polarities. Specifically, the pixel voltage Vp has the positive polarity if it is larger than a common electrode voltage Vcom, and has the negative polarity if it is less than the common electrode voltage Vcom. As long as the absolute value of the pixel voltage Vp applied across liquid crystals is unchanged, a gray scale image can be displayed with the same luminance.
In a frame of image, if the polarity of each dot (i.e. a sub-pixel) maintains inverse to the polarities of dots adjacent to the dot (i.e. four dots respectively located above, below, left and right to the dot), a driving manner of dot inversion is implemented. In the next frame of image, the polarities of the voltages of all sub-pixels are inversed at the same time, and hence the polarities of the adjacent sub-pixels still maintain inverse to each other. The dot inversion manner is the finest in spatial fusion of the flicker since each sub-pixel is dealt with individually, so that the dot inversion manner has an optimal flicker suppressing effect. As shown in FIG. 1, the driving waveform used in the dot inversion has a period of one addressing duration (i.e., one Hsync cycle), so that the dot inversion is regarded as a high-frequency inversion, leading to power consumption which is directly proportional to a square of the frequency. Therefore, the driving manner of dot inversion causes the maximum power consumption compared with other inversion driving manners.
As for a driving manner of column inversion, polarities of sub-pixels corresponding to one of two adjacent data lines are respectively inverse to polarities of sub-pixels corresponding to the other of the two adjacent data lines by column. In such driving manner of column inversion, a phase difference of π (180°) is present between the flicker waveforms of the two adjacent columns of sub-pixels, so that the flickers are suppressed in a certain degree. However, no phase difference is present between the flicker waveforms of sub-pixels in each column of sub-pixels, which easily leads to longitudinal line flickers. As shown in FIG. 1, the driving waveform used in the column inversion has a period of one frame of image (i.e., one Vsync cycle) as a unit, thus the column inversion is regarded as a low frequency inversion, leading to the minimal power consumption compared with other inversion driving manners.
Corresponding to the driving manner of the column inversion, there is a driving manner of row inversion. Specifically, a phase difference of π (180°) is present between the flicker waveforms of two adjacent rows of sub-pixels according to the driving manner of row inversion, to suppress the flickers in a certain degree. However, no phase difference is present between the flickers of the sub-pixels in each row of sub-pixels, which easily leads to horizontal line flickers. The voltage frequency of the driving signals for the row inversion is same as that for the dot inversion, thus the driving manner of row inversion has no advantage in power consumption, and hence is generally not used for displaying at present.